


Apparently Apparating Without A Wand

by angwe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: The Animated Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Gen, Harry Potter Crossover - Freeform, M/M, X-Men Crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angwe/pseuds/angwe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kurt Wagner is asked to infiltrate the wizarding world to help the Professor confirm his suspicions about x-genes in wizards, and ends up being very close friends with another parentless boy with a murky past.</p>
<p>Originally conceived as a present idea for a friend, I now can't stop writing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Getting In Is Tough, Making Friends Proves Easier

It had been years since Kurt Wagner had wandered the streets of London. He still wasn’t sure why the Professor had asked him to scout the train station, but he was glad the last time he’d talked to Forge that they’d improved his perception filter. It was less suspicious to have a bunch of different looking people wandering around the station that to see one guy obviously returning too quickly over the course of a day. Five hours into his surveillance, he finally saw it: a group of people walk toward what was apparently a brick wall and suddenly disappear.  
“Whoa. A whole family like me?”  
 _They are among those I want you to check on. There is almost no real distance between where they disappear and where they appear. I will guide you with Cerebro’s help, but you just need to transport yourself five feet directly forward.  
But Professor, that’s still inside the pillar!  
Please trust me, Kurt._  
He felt the enhanced presence of the Professor “riding along” in his head, boosted by some of Cerebro’s recent enhancements, courtesy of Forge.  
“Here goes nichts .”  
  
The sulfurous smell seemed to attract no attention. And, as one might have hoped, there was nothing out of the ordinary to these people to see someone suddenly appear.  
 _Professor?  
Yes, Kurt?  
Was in die Welt was das?  
There is an artificial perception barrier between the rest of the world and this space. Additionally, it seems...compressed somehow. I assume a portal to a pocket dimension that actually fits within ours, much like the police box from that show you’re so fond of.  
Ja, genau, OK._  
“Hi! Are you new this year? A little old to be starting, but sometimes you just don’t figure it out right away, huh?”  
Kurt almost jumped in surprise, but realized that the boy with a nearly-obscured scar on his head was just being friendly.  
“Uh, yeah. I move around a lot and don’t have any family, so they took a while to find me.”  
 _Good cover, Kurt.  
Thanks, Professor. Are you staying the whole time?  
No, I’ll do some research now that I’ve seen the uniforms and the crest.  
OK, how do you want me to check-in?  
Jean will contact you. That OK?  
Ja, genau.  
Auf wiedersehen, Kurt.  
Tschuss._  
“You OK?”  
“Oh, sorry, yeah, I was just a little distracted.”  
They had been walking steadily away from where he’d come in, and Kurt kept hearing the sounds of people coming through the “portal” behind him.  
“Are you hungry or anything?”  
“I would love a little something to snack on.”  
The teleportations didn’t usually take that much out of him, but he could feel the effect of having had to move through the extra dimension and past the perception filter. Professor Xavier had helped, but there was a certain amount of effort he’d had to put in, and it drained him a bit.  
“How much do you have?”  
“Only a few pounds on me at the moment.”  
“Oh, that’s no good, you’ll need sickles and knuts.”  
The words sounded normal enough, but weren’t any kind of money the German teenager had ever heard of before.  
“But let’s not worry about that now. I’ve got a few galleons on me. Will candy work for you, or were you thinking of something more substantial.”  
“Chocolate would actually help.”  
“Great! We’ll get a couple frogs and see which wizard cards we get.”  
“Wizard cards?”  
“Yeah, like baseball cards, only with famous witches and wizards on ‘em.”  
The information didn’t quite want to process. Being Nightcrawler, with all of its attendant complications, had made him quite easy with learning when someone was a mutant. Come to think of it, he was pretty sure anyone who’d spent a decent amount of time with the Professor tended to be a little more open-minded, but he was having trouble with witches and wizards. It didn’t quite sit as easily as he wanted it to. His job seemed to be about to get complicated.  
“OK, _ja_. That sounds good.”  
“Are you German?”  
“I was born there, but I’ve spent a lot of time in America lately.”  
A quizzical look from behind the round glasses greeted this revelation.  
“When did you move here?”  
“About a year ago,” per his cover story.  
“Been moved around a lot?”  
“Yeah, sometimes of my own choice.”  
“Wow, I could never have done that.”  
“Your folks gone too?”  
There was surprise, mixed with a bit of gladness, in the boy’s reaction. It was followed by a hint of sadness that Kurt almost recognized. Loss, but not like his own. This kid’s parents were taken from him, they didn’t throw him out.  
“Yeah. Killed.”  
“Sorry, man.”  
“Yeah, well, let’s get some chocolate. That should help.”  
  
A few minutes later, Kurt was staring at the frog that’d nearly scared him into thinking Toad had followed him, and got hold of some wicked new technology.  
“I wasn’t quite expecting that.”  
“Neither did I, the first time. I suppose I ought to have warned you.”  
“Is it...alive?”  
“No, just animated. The spell goes away when you start to eat it.”  
Sure enough, as it got closer to his mouth, the frog stopped moving and looked a lot more like a chocolate candy shaped in a mold, and less like a real frog.  
“You haven’t really been here all that long, have you?”  
“Why do you say that?”  
“Your German accent isn’t going to go away, but you’re still using American slang like ‘man’ instead of ‘mate’.”  
“Well aren’t you just a regular Sherlock.”  
“Not really. It’s just a thing I’ve noticed with some of the other expats around. They hold onto the slang for about a year and then it’s all ‘mate’ and ‘chum’.”  
“Well, I still call the thing that takes you up from the ground floor a ‘lift’.”  
“That’s the German, I bet. And the next floor up is?”  
“The first floor, of course.”  
“Of course.”  
A train whistle sounded and the disembodied voice of the station attendant seemed to come from right next to Kurt’s ear.  
 _Hogwarts Express departs in ten minutes._  
“Whoa. Not used to that voice not being the Professor’s.”  
“Professor? Were you in a school in America, too?”  
He could have kicked himself for the slip, but it seemed that the kid wasn’t thrown.  
“Yeah, it was pretty cool, too. But I had to come here when...”  
Not sure how to cover his tracks, he stumbled over choosing his words.  
“Hey, don’t worry about it. If it’s hard to talk about, you don’t have to.”  
“Thanks.”  
“No problem. Let’s get on the train before we get left behind. I don’t want to have to deal with that again. I’m Harry, by the way.”  
“Kurt. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”  
A single eyebrow raised over the round rims, and as Harry’s hair went up with it, the scar showed fully, a perfect lightning-bolt. Odd.  
  
The three friends had clearly formed a fairly intimate bond, and Kurt felt a little out of place sitting in the car with them.  
“Hey, Kurt, what did they teach you at your American school?”  
The girl seemed to be unceasingly curious about him, and it was making him a little nervous.  
“The Professor believes in a very well-rounded curriculum, so we did as much reading of the classics as we did physical training. There were some pretty crazy tests.”  
Three pairs of eyes suddenly focused on him.  
“Physical training?”  
“Well of course. The Professor has always said it best, ‘Your talents come from within, so you must keep the body trained as well as your abilities.’”  
“Why do you always say ‘The Professor’ as if there were only one? Did you have many teachers?”  
“In America, it’s a little less formal, I suppose Dr. McCoy deserves the title as well, but he never insists on it. Come to think of it, neither does The Professor, but we all just call him that. Er, called.”  
“What subject did he teach?”  
“He was in charge and was everyone’s mentor. He only did formal teaching with students that had...talents like his.”  
It felt weird not to openly talk about being a mutant in front of people who he could see were just as different, but the Professor had warned him that their talents, while likely similar to a certain strain of mutations already catalogued very well by Cerebro, were not identified as such within this group.  
  
“They think of themselves as normal humans with magical talents, Kurt.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I mean just what I said. They all seem to exhibit a cross strain of psychokinetic and energy manipulation mutations. However, they’ve created themselves as an insular society. They haven’t been exposed to the ideas of mutation and the X-genes.”  
“So, as far as they think, they just happen to be magic-users like in those fantasy stories.”  
“There’s more truth in those stories every day. You should know that.”  
“OK, Professor, but what does this mean for the mission?”  
“You can’t talk about mutation quite the way you are used to. I know it’s painful to do, but you’d do well to couch talk of your powers in terms of ‘talents’. They tend to use ‘spells’ to focus their energy, and the school I’m sending you to is all about teaching them these things.”  
“What if they expect me to levitate something or work magic that isn’t my ‘talent’?”  
“Forge offered once to make me something to help focus my mental powers, but at this point my own training has made such technology useless. However, I’ve noted that you have some minor mental powers that come with your teleportation. Your brain needs to know where it is going. That’s why it’s always easier for you if you can see, or know the layout, of where you’re trying to get to.”  
“Genau. Genau.”  
“This pendant will enhance both the power of your perception filter - some of their ‘magic’ is designed to see through disguises - and your innate minor telepathic abilities. It can give you a bit of psychokinesis as well. Just be warned that it will take far more effort than teleporting.”  
“Can I try it out with your help?”  
“I was about to suggest that. Try lifting this pen.”  
“Oh my god.”  
“Very good. Remember to learn their ‘spells’. I’ve no idea if they’ll help you in the long run, but it’s always nice to have a focus and they’ll accept it a little more readily.”  
“You’re right about the energy, though.”  
“Have a piece of chocolate. It always helps me.”  
“Thanks.”  
  
“You OK?”  
“Huh? Wass? Oh, sorry. Just thinking.”  
“You do that a lot.”  
The smile on Harry’s face told him that he’d found a kindred spirit of sorts. Someone who wouldn’t look askance at him for drifting off. Someone it would be safe to talk to Jean around. That seemed like a piece of good luck.  
“Oh, look, Potter’s found a new piece of human flotsam to befriend.”  
And this seemed like a piece of bad luck. The blond boy with his big friends looked distinctly dangerous, in an all too familiar way. He talked like Mystique when she was angry, though, to be honest, Kurt had never seen her not angry, so he supposed the qualifier was unnecessary.  
“Hallo. Ich heise Kurt. Wie heissen sie?”  
“What?”  
“Oh. I’m terribly sorry. Hello. My. Name. Is. Kurt. What. Is. Your. Name?”  
There was a dangerous flash in the boy’s eyes, and the two behind him tried to menace, but they were all a little younger and so couldn’t quite muster the necessary bulk. The one on the left would have it soon enough, though.  
“Malfoy. Draco Malfoy.”  
“Wow. Just like double-oh seven.”  
“What?”  
“You know, ‘Bond. James Bond.’”  
The sneer was perfect, even beautiful. “Some muggle thing, I suppose. C’mon Crabbe, Goyle, let’s get out of here. I didn’t think Potter could sink any lower.”  
Again, there was something dangerously beautiful about even the way this Draco swept out of the room.  
“Well, he’s a pleasant fellow, isn’t he?”  
“I don’t think Draco knows the meaning of ‘pleasant’.”  
“That’s hardly charitable, Harry. I think he’s perfectly aware of the meaning, it’s the execution that eludes him.”  
“Why can’t any of you just say he a right tosser and get on with it.”  
“Ron! Language!”  
“Sorry, Hermione.”  
“So, how far behind am I?”  
“That depends on how well your American school taught you. How old are you?”  
Since no age would ever show on Kurt’s face while the perception filter was up, they’d decided to go with something that would make him seem slightly older, so that any slip-ups might be blamed on a spotty education, but they’d realized they couldn’t make him too young.  
“Fifteen.”  
“Oh. Well, you’d normally be studying for the OWLs, but I suspect you’ve not had a very continuous time of it.”  
“Does it really show?”  
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. I just meant that what you’ve been telling us seems to imply that. I didn’t mean to offend.”  
“Ah. OK. Ja. I see what you mean. You’re probably right, though. How old are you all?”  
“Only fourteen. You might be in some of our classes, I guess, if they’re trying to catch you up.”  
“I hope so. It’d be nice to have someone I know in class.”  
“We’ll keep an eye out for you, right boys?”  
The Professor might have preferred Kurt to keep a more detached perspective, but Kurt had gone too much of his life without friends. This was a nice change of pace.  
The rest of the train ride passed in fairly normal conversation, with the exception of talk of magic like it was the most normal thing in the world. Kurt found that if he just kept thinking of it as a mutation ability, it was almost like hanging out in the common room at the Xavier Institute.  
  
“Well, we warn’t expectin’ anyone new, but I suppose you’ll be sorted like the rest and given a place. Dumbledore’ll need to talk to you though, most likely.”  
The hairy gentleman standing before him could have been a brother to Colossus, though he seemed to have a genial outgoing attitude where the steel man would have been quiet and unimposing. Before he could say anything, Kurt was shepherded up the front stairs of the castle-like school. It looked exactly like a university in München or a cathedral in Mainz.  
  
After the incident with the hat, a little too much like having the Professor or Jean in his head, but without any sense of personality or decorum, dinner passed in a blur. He vaguely recalled sitting with his friends from the train and the food being good, appearing out of nowhere, to no-one’s surprise. His mind cleared when the big man...Hagrid, that was it - pulled him aside to take him to see the headmaster of the school. He tried not to look nervous, but was saved by the loquacity of the jovial giant.  
“You’ll love Dumbledore, I’m sure. He’s always good to new students who’ve had a bit of trouble. Not sayin’ you look like trouble, but only thinkin’ that you’ve not been here before and sometimes that means you mightn’t’ve had the easiest time, wondering why you can do things without meanin’ to an’ all that...”  
It wasn’t that Hagrid had actually stopped talking, but that nothing he said was actually informative, as far as Kurt could tell, nor was it either encouraging or offensive. Something about this man was clearly unable to offend without trying very hard to do so.  
“...the fifth time, though. That was a bit of a lucky break. Oh, here we are. Lemme see.”  
He fumbled around in an absurd number of pockets finally finding a small scrap of parchment paper.  
“Ah! Here it is. ‘Pumpkin beer.’”  
It seemed as though he’d been odd about his articulation of the last two words, but when the phoenix statue suddenly started rotating and showing a spiral staircase, Kurt realizes that it was a psychic lock. The Professor had put similar ones on the X-Men’s suit-change units.  
“Right. Up you go.”  
“Thank you, Hagrid.”  
“What? No need to thank me. Have to see the headmaster, and Filch’ll be busy getting the first years settled. Just doin’ my job.”  
With that, he wandered off and Kurt ascended the staircase.  
  
“Hello, Kurt. Welcome to Hogwarts.”  
“Thank you, Professor Dumbledore. I’m happy to be here.”  
“I’m sure you are, m’boy. Now, would you mind turning that contraption on your wrist off?”  
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, Professor.”  
“I’m perfectly aware that you are blue and have a tail. Let’s just put it that way.”  
In a panic, Kurt scanned the room, eyeing the rafters.  
“I suppose you could hide up there, and Fawkes would gladly join you, but, alas, my powers do not work so well in the school. It has certain dampeners in effect that prevent all but the most, shall we say, specifically talented to transport in your particular fashion. And I’m quite out of flying practice, even if I did have a broom.”  
“How do you know so much?”  
“Charles probably thinks I’ve forgotten him.”  
“You know the Professor?”  
“I knew him well in his younger days. He did spend some time here in England, you know.”  
“Ja. The accent stuck, I think.”  
“Though I don’t think he’s kept track of me. Otherwise, I expect you would have been told.”  
“He had a pretty hard time helping me get here, I think you might be more shielded than he realizes.”  
“I would imagine searching across an entire ocean presents it’s own set of limitations as well.”  
“Ja, good point.”  
Kurt knew that Cerebro was a secret to be guarded, and no matter how well this Dumbledore might have known the Professor when they were young, he wasn’t a known factor in this mission. Best to keep him at a little bit of a distance.  
“When we last spoke, he said he was working on some theory about magic. I hope, if you're supposed to test it, that you know what you're getting into."  
"I've got a pretty good idea."  
"I'm not entirely sure you do, my little blue friend."  
There was a gentle note to his voice, but Kurt knew he was being insistent.  
"You- you really can see through it?"  
"One doesn't become the most powerful wizard the world has ever know without being observant," he chuckled, tapping his glasses lightly. “I can also tell a few other things about you. You carry no wand - you’ll want to correct that, it looks more natural to us if you’re waving something - but you are among those they call ‘mutants’ in the muggle world. I assume you can apparate, that’s how you got to nine and three quarters - oh, that’s the train platform - and that box on your arm doesn’t just disguise you, it’s enhancing something about you.”  
“Wow. You’re good, like Holmes.”  
“I’m not the only one who’ll be able to see this. At least three teachers, and probably one or two students will as well. Don’t worry; they’ve been told to behave. I am still fond of Charles and what he works for. If he thinks this will help, I’ll do my best to work with him, but these are dangerous times, Kurt.”  
“Warum ist das?”  
“Nobody else quite believes me yet, but I can see all the signs of Voldemort returning.”  
Kurt’s internal reaction to the name was something akin to how he felt whenever someone mentioned Magneto.  
“I’m not sure I like that name, Headmaster Dumbledore, sir.”  
“And well you should be wary of it.”  
“I’ll keep it in mind.”  
“On a happier note, I understand you’ve made the acquaintance of Mr. Potter?”  
“Harry’s a really nice guy!”  
“He’s a bit more than that, even if he doesn’t know how much more yet. Keep close to him, Kurt, you’ll find yourself advanced further in the classes than anyone thought you’d be, as a newcomer, but I’ve told them you have ‘natural talent’ and, I hope I’m not overselling Charles’ skill as a teacher, that you learn quickly.”  
“You have to keep on your toes at Xavier School,” Kurt nodded.  
“Good. Welcome, again, to Hogwarts, Mr. Wagner.”  
  
Kurt was at the window, trying to focus his thoughts on contacting Jean, when he heard a noise in the dormitory. Turning slowly, as though he had just been staring out at the scenery and was in no hurry to acknowledge someone intruding on his thoughts, he caught sight of Harry smiling at him, putting his glasses on and shuffling over quietly.  
“It’s beautiful out there, isn’t it?”  
“Ja, sehr schoen.”  
“Huh?”  
“Oh, sorry. ‘Very nice’ or ‘very pretty’. I slip into German when I’m not concentrating on what I say.”  
“I’ll be sure to brush up on my German then.”  
The smile slowly crept onto Kurt’s face. “I’d offer to tutor, but I think I’ve got some catching up to do.”  
“I heard that they don’t want to put you with the really young kids, so you’ll be in our classes.”  
“That’s what Dumbledore told me.”  
“He usually knows what he’s doing.”  
There was an unmistakable admiration in the other boy’s eyes as he said this.  
“He reminds me a lot of the Professor.”  
Neither of them said anything for a while, staring out at the beautiful countryside, and eventually Harry threw an arm around Kurt affectionately.  
“Maybe this can be a home for you too, then.”  
Smiling even bigger than he had been before, Kurt returned the half-embrace, all the while still staring out at the grounds.  
“Maybe...but I’ve got just one question for right now.”  
“What’s that?”  
“Well, that was going to be my question. What’s that?” He pointed to the tall rings and the giant stands off in the distance in a dip in the countryside.  
“It’s a Quiddich Pitch. You’ll see how it works pretty soon. I’m the Seeker for Gryffindor.”  
Again, a comfortable silence stretched out until the two boys, leaning on each other without realizing it, both came to after almost falling asleep on their feet.  
“Oof. It’s late. We’ll both need some sleep for tomorrow.”  
“Guten nacht, Harry.”  
“Now that one I got. Guten nacht, Kurt.”  
Wandering toward his bed, he remarked, “Your accent’s not bad.”  
“Thanks.”


	2. Unanticipated Effects and Unexpected Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurt's first class drives home the problems with his device, but he gets some help from friends he didn't know he had.

Kurt nearly panicked when he came-to in a four-poster bed with a canopy. It certainly wasn’t the dorm at Xavier and it wasn’t the inexpensive hotel he’d been put up at in London.  
“Was?”  
“Morning, Kurt!” came a pair of cheerful voices.  
“Ja. Genau. Guten Morgen, Harry und Ron.”  
“You’re slipping again, but I think we got that one.”  
“Right, mate, you’re really going to make my head hurt if you keep going into German in the mornings.”  
“Sorry, Ron. If it helps, it’ll never be anything complicated.”  
“It does, actually, yeah.”  
“Hey, Kurt, Dumbledore gave me a couple things for you this morning.”  
“How long have you been up, Harry?”  
“Oh, not too long, but he likes to move about in the ‘between times’, as he’s called them. Nearly startled me, since I wasn’t entirely awake.”  
Kurt took the bundle, and discovered that it contained a robe, much like those Harry and Ron were putting on at the moment, and a long, thin box. Opening it, he discovered a narrow piece of wood, fashioned into the shape of a conjurer's wand like from a Grimm fairy tale. Not the sleek black things he’d seen stage magicians use, but a handsomely carved piece of natural wood. Looking up, he noticed that both Harry and Ron had something similar stashed about their person, and it was always vaguely covered by their robes.  
 _Where would Wolverine put it? Gah, he’s got the claws, wrong person to think about. Genau. Genau. Where would Forge put his gun? Ah! Got it!_  
He slipped the thing out of the loops of string that were tying it down and slid it up his shirtsleeve, ensuring that the wrist straps on the enhanced cloaking device were snug enough to keep it there, but loose enough to let him get at it.  
 _I’ll have to see what can be adjusted about those straps._  
“You ready?”  
“Ja. Ja. Genau. Just have to get this robe on.”  
“Throw it on as we head out. Breakfast is soon.”  
  
“What was with all those looks I was getting?”  
“You mean besides that you’re the new kid?”  
“Isn’t there a whole year’s worth of new kids?”  
“They’re first-years, to be expected, you’re something else altogether.”  
“No transfers?”  
“Not usually, by the time you’re ready for school, someone has usually found you and invited you to one. Only five students in the last twenty years tranferred to Hogwarts. Most of them can keep going to their old school, even if they move away. Where were you in America?”  
“Most recently in New York.”  
“City?”  
“Close to.”  
“Why’d you come here?”  
“Hermione-”  
“It’s OK, Harry. She can ask, ja? I just might not answer. Sorry, it’s just, not really something I like to talk about.”  
“That’s OK, I won’t pry, Kurt.”  
He felt a half-smile curl one side of his mouth. “Thanks.”  
  
“Wand,” whispered into his ear, and he was worried for a moment that he’d forgotten all his English. He gave a quizzical look to the side, then followed Harry’s eyes around the room.  
Oh. Right. He could have slapped himself, but, noticing that some of the other students were slow to get theirs ready, he relaxed and flicked his wrist, catching the handle of his wand as it slid out.  
“Nice.”  
“Yeah, yeah. Lovely bit of flash, Kraut-boy,” sneered across the room at him.  
“To each his own style, no, Herr Malfoy?”  
“What did you call me?”  
“My, you are an unworldly little terror, aren’t you? ‘Herr’ is Deutsche for ‘Mister’, a title of respect, or, at the very least, civility.”  
“Respect is the least you could give me,” Kurt distinctly heard muttered, but he was pretty sure no one else could, as he hadn’t seen Draco’s lips move perceptibly.  
 _I wonder how much “enhancement” this little device is going to give me. I need to talk to Jean and see if anyone can get info from Forge about it. I’ll need to learn to be careful if it keeps up like this._  
  
The rest of the class passed in a blur of trying to remember to say what Hermione was saying, since she was always easier to hear than Professor Flitwick, and make the appropriate gestures, all while concentrating his latent mental powers to do the work...and not accidentally teleport, which was harder than he expected it to be. The enhancements being worked by the device made everything based in his mutation that much closer to the surface, as it were. Oddly, he felt he was being “helped” by an overall resistance in the air. Yet another anomaly he’d need to ask Jean about.  
“Hey, Kurt, you coming or what? You can stop trying to enchant that coin.”  
“Huh?”  
“You’ve left it floating.”  
“Oh, ja. Genau.”  
Remembering that Hermione had used a kind of gesture with the wand when she stopped mid-spell to “release the spell and avoid a misfire” as she put it, he mimicked it as he dropped his concentration, then caught the coin as it fell, and stood up.  
Only to find himself caught by Ron and Harry.  
“You OK?”  
 _Right. Damn. Forgot about the extra drain._  
“I could use some chocolate, actually. It helps. These kinds of things aren’t my...specialty...and it takes a bit of effort for me to do them.”  
“We’ll have to start packing an emergency bag for you. Maybe we ought to carry a frog or two ourselves, huh?”  
The honest concern on Harry’s face gave Kurt a jolt he wasn’t expecting. He felt cared for, and he didn’t know why or how he deserved it.  
“Nein. Nein. Don’t worry. Something I need to remember.”  
Lifted to his feed, Kurt managed to get outside, digging toward his shirt pocket under the robes for the small piece of chocolate he’d saved from the other day -  
\- and was suddenly presented with a strange tableaux. Sound dropped away, and he could see an image of Jean, as if she were standing right on top of an invisible dome over the school, making gestures with her hands.  
“Can you keep walking?”  
“Um, I think a seat might be good. Going to need to take a moment to clear my head.”  
They moved him to a bench and he sat back, nibbling the chocolate and gazing vaguely upward. He tried to ignore Harry’s concerned stare and Hermione’s frank attempts to do a medical evaluation.  
 _Con...cen...tra...te...on...me!_  
 _Ja, I hear you._  
 _Oh, good, that’s much better._  
 _What do you mean?_  
 _It’s harder to get in without a bit of outbound traffic._  
 _Ja, OK, I’ll take your word. This is tough though._  
 _I saw._  
 _Huh? But you said-_  
 _I haven’t been shirking empathy training, Kurt. It gets through easier than thoughts._  
 _Oh. Buy why are you up there?_  
 _I’m not. I just needed to get your attention and focus._  
 _Why? I’m in the middle of the day here._  
Ron was starting to look worried, from what Kurt could see in his peripheral vision, and he distinctly heard a wand flick close to his ear in Hermione’s direction.  
 _I know, but you need to keep an eye out for your friend. His enemies are starting to branch out._  
 _Which one?_  
 _The one with the scar. He’s made a big enemy. We don’t know what it is yet, but we know it’s starting to have some effects outside that world._  
 _It’s a wizard called Voldemort._  
 _Where did you hear that?_  
 _The headmaster here says he knew the Professor when they were younger. Mentioned the name. Talked about … dark … times._  
 _OK … We’ll … look … into … it._  
A hand came out of nowhere brandishing a baking square of dark chocolate, a soothing, but firm, voice said, “Eat this.”  
He found that he did it, with exactly the same kind of relish combined with obedience that he would have if his grandmother had given him a sweet that she’d made, which he really ought to try.  
“Danke.”  
“Bitte, junge. Bitte.”  
He looked up to find an older woman in a nurse’s outfit as it might have looked if only nuns became nurses.  
“Ich heise Kurt.”  
“Ich heise Frau Pomfrey.”  
“Guten Tag, Frau Pomfrey. Du bist sehr guetig.”  
“Nein. Ich bin die Krankenschwester. Das ist meine Arbeit.”  
“Trotzdem -”  
“Nein. Komm mit mir.”  
“I’ll see you all later. Thanks for the catch.”  
“Madam Pomfrey, will he be OK?”  
“He just needs some rest, Harry. You three go on to your next class.”  
Kurt watched them head off, Harry continually turning back to look at him. He tried to wave convincingly, but his arm felt leaden. Hermione took a quick glance back, but then seemed to be nudging Harry forward. A slight, unnamed worry crossed his mind.  
“We’ll get you sorted before this afternoon’s match. You wouldn’t want to miss that. My, you do have a peculiar color, though.”  
Kurt looked around but noticed that the courtyard was empty and breathed a sigh of relief.  
“Think I’d blab something like that with others around? I’ve got a better head on me than that.”  
“Sorry.”  
“It’s OK, I’m only taking it out of you a little. Come on. Dumbledore and I have been working on something to help you with that drain you’re feeling. Too much chocolate all the time is going to start to wreak havoc on your system.”  
“Hey, I don’t mind chocolate.”  
“At the rate you’ll need to eat it, in order to keep up appearances, no amount of magical skill will explain why you aren’t gaining any weight.”  
It seemed to him, now, that the quantity she spoke of would be crushing, and was almost put off the chocolate bar in front of him by it.  
“So, what have you got?”  
“Well, it’s not just a metabolic drain. There’s a psychic component, too. Chocolate happens to be one of those foods that works well on both levels. From Herbology, I’ve collected a good supply of ingredients to help you better channel the psychic energies.”  
“Better channel?”  
“You’re in an odd state, my boy. You have a very strong innate ability to move about in a way that requires quite a bit of effort from us.”  
“You mean the teleporting?”  
“Exactly. We call it ‘Apparating’, and the school has a very strong spell laid down to prevent it. However, it seems to be interacting with the other aspects of your abilities more rigorously, somehow their ‘foreign’-ness to your system is causing it to read them as the actual problem. Since your teleportation is more natural to you, I’m guessing that you’ve actually been feeling like you’re close to doing it accidentally lately.”  
“Ja. You and the headmaster worked this all out?”  
“I got considerable help from Miss Granger, and Mr. Flitwick also provided some clues, though he thought he was answering a different set of questions.”  
Kurt halted a bit at the mention of Hermione.  
“I probably should have guessed she’d be one of the people to be able to see through it.”  
“She’s stronger than she knows. Thinks it’s all book-smarts, but she’s got power.”  
“Doesn’t Harry though, too? Dumbledore seemed to be implying that.”  
She sighed as she held open the door under an arch carved “Infirmary”.  
“He’s having to come into himself after years of being locked away.”  
A sudden flash of the Munich circus, in one of the less-successful seasons, swayed his whole body, and he was surprised to find Madam Pomfrey setting him down on a bed, gently.  
“You, too, are stronger than you look, Frau Pomfrey. Sie bissen gute Deutsch sprechen auch.”  
“Danke schoen, Kurt. In any case, I’ve got a potion that will help your mind, while you’re here at Hogwarts, to channel the interference from the anti-Apparating spell. You’re still going to have to keep snacks on you, but we’ve got plenty of kids with high metabolisms here, so that won’t be out of place. Hopefully, you won’t feel quite so close to accidentally teleporting, and the other stuff will be easier. That was Dumbledore’s working of it, anyway.”  
One swig told him that she was absolutely right. It also told him that she probably had used some additional magic in the creation of the potion. Though he could tell that it should taste far more bitter than it was, he also noted that it wasn’t a cloyingly sweet taste, nor did was there any obvious attempt to simply overpower with an alternate flavor.  
“No matter how much better you feel right now, rest anyway. That’s an order. There will be plenty of excitement at the match.”  
“I don’t want to miss that. Harry’s playing, right?”  
She smiled down at the strange boy, seeing his affections for Potter so clearly.  
“Yes. He’s a bit of a star for Gryffindor.”  
Kurt lay back and closed his eyes.  
“You’ll wake me.”  
“Have no fear,” she chuckled.  
And he found he didn’t. Not in the way he sometimes used to. The aching memory of the circus has dragged a whole series of anxieties with it that he was almost continually repressing at the X-Mansion. Here, somehow, being with Harry, he felt less afraid of his past.


End file.
